A train crash in Bavaria, which left 11 people dead, was caused by human error on the part of a train controller, prosecutors have said.
Dozens of people were injured when two trains collided on a single-track stretch of railway in Bavaria, Germany, last week.
The train controller, a 39-year-old man, opened the track to the two trains and tried to warn the drivers, according to prosecutors.
It is likely that he will be charged with involuntary manslaughter and could face up to five year in jail.
The chief prosecutor in the case, Wolfgang Giese, said: “If he had complied with the rules… there would have been no collision.”
Investigations into why the trains collided focused on why the trains were on the tracks at the same time, despite a safety mechanism of an automatic signalling system designed to halt any train that passed a stop signal.
Prosecutors said the controller’s actions had “catastrophic” consequences but they don’t think he acted deliberately.
All those killed in the crash were men aged between 24 and 59.
I can’t believe they’re pinning everything on the controller. His actions might have been the immediate cause. But there must be a wealth of other underlying causes, e.g. the failure of the safety devices, the driver of the train pulled into the siding must surely have suspected all was not well before responding to the green light?
I agree that there must be other underlying causes that should be investigated e.g. drivers of the train might have not seen the signs, or might not have a clear visual of the track either through the windscreen or through the digital controls.
Another thing that needs to be asked as were there any near-misses that were not reported? There must have been a near-miss.
Human error is the first stage of the investigation into the cause, not the conclusion. Alton Towers all over again. There was a major train crash in the UK many years back in almost identical circumstances and the signalman took the full blame. The conclusion now was that management pressures and failures led to his actions on the day. I hope that the Austrian court considers that possibility with this case.
Shame to see the concepts of Human Error and Blame in the same headline both here and on the BBC. Either it was a genuine Error and there were deficiencies in the system design that failed to prevent it, or it was a deliberate violation and not an error. Either way a rush to blame seldom serves to identify all the contributory factors and enable the chance of a repeat being minimised. Looking at the system design – this happened on a single line track, despite safety devices being deployed following a similar accident in 2011, with a late train… Read more »
Another prime example of an individual being blamed as being the problem. Any system which relies on a person as the single point of failure is not sufficient. Instead of pointing the finger at the driver who will never forgive himself we should be looking much higher up the organisation and the other factors.
If the German prosecutor is a health and safety professional then I regret to say that we are back to basics. Human errror is a highly abused concept. Human error from the side of management or the system is mostly the real underlying cause(s).
Successful prevention will not be realised if we don’t look for multiple causes in multiple levels.
I agree with John. They need learn from aviation and look at all the underlying causes to see if human error can be factored out completely. If you start pinning blame so quickly to one person you will start a culture of non reporting and fear which will not serve to help anyone, particularly as ‘they don’t think he acted deliberately.’